Aaron Vaughn

Aaron Vaughn is a Midwest transplant currently residing in Oakland, California, where he is learning to endure the comforts of gentrification by playing and writing about video games, asking if he can try on your Google Glass, and honking at food trucks. His writing can also be found on Gaming-Age, or in the form of some dirty limericks under the far left coffee table next to the register at Coffee Works, located at 107 Pike Street, Seattle, WA

Articles by Aaron Vaughn

E3 dumps a cornucopia of impressions and insight onto the internet. Thank goodness we didn’t find ourselves under that umbrella. I played as much as I could, and wanted to talk about a few games that almost entirely changed my perspective upon spending some more time with them.

E3 has come and gone. Attendees squint around in its wake, cobbling together a means of remembrance from the show. What were the themes? Was this the year of early access? When Battlecry is dated for “Beta 2015” it’s hard to think not. Maybe it was finally the unveiling of next-gen games? Maybe there were #trends to talk about. Sure, let’s do that. I feel like I’ve learned something. I daresay, even a few things.

It took 93 hours for me to realize that I’d been tricked in thinking I was capable of completing Persona 4. Where I was once unable to settle into the game, it had recently made a home upon me, as does a cat who’s decided to nap. I hadn’t noticed, and in standing to take my leave, we were suddenly tumbling to the ground alongside each other, its claws caught in my clothes as I tried to escape. It pondered a lifetime in seconds, “How did I come to be owned by this person?” before we hit the floor.

And this time, it was personal. Find out just how personal after the jump.Continue reading →

I’d been at Persona 4 for three years. Playing any kind of game for that long requires a different approach than what committing regular hours to it asks of someone.

This was like building a sand castle that would take all summer long — constantly at risk of being washed away or stomped on by some uncontrollable force. Construction would be put on hold for the tide to lower, or to recover from having to fight some beach jerk. Once I’d picked myself up, operations would continue. I’d refresh myself on the game’s story, re-familiarize myself with my registered personas, and soldier on.

The end of 2012, however, brought with it a tidal wave. After the jump, we will rebuild.Continue reading →

That’s right — two years in this entry. We’ve got a lot to cover, and that’s not even counting all the stuff I had to leave out just to make sense of everything.

Also, I gotta say, it really killed the mood to fixate on Chie like that. Not when Persona 4 gives you the chance to be a player and go romantic with all the female S-Links. Truly, this was the land of opportunity, Japan. Opportunistic lands out there. Really fertile stuff, if you go for it — girl-wise. Game-wise, though, Persona 4 may as well have been dead to me by February of 2011.

So there I was, asleep, 8PM, fighting an addiction to caffeine the only way that I knew how: having crawled into a dark corner of my bedroom underneath a pile of blankets and laundry. I’m not a drug addict, but I feel like if I’m ever curious about how withdrawal feels, that I can stifle that curiosity by shutting off my grip on caffeine.

The shock of finishing Persona 3 had rendered me aimless. Without a compass, I was capable of reckless decisions like ignoring my subservience to energy drinks which resulted in three-hour post-work naps. Naps around 6:30PM. All the great decision-making that I’d been doing that summer was suddenly unwound by completing a video game.

I’m going off memory for most of this, so things aren’t 100% accurate. Fortunately, it being my own memory means nobody will know how right or wrong I am, leaving me to falsify information as I please. Vote for me in the primaries.

But yes, I’ve been playing Persona 4 for the last four years. It’s still the same PS2 disc and original save file. What’s wrong with me? Maybe we’ll find out. Before that, we have to talk about Persona 3. Numbers come in a certain order, according to some scholars, and it just so happens there’s some groundwork to lay here.